Peer-to-Peer networks, called thereafter P2P networks, are increasingly used in computing operations since they allow, among other things, the distribution of data between different peers in order to share a work load between different computers.
For that purpose, P2P network operations are based on a fair distribution of application data so that each peer is supposed to deal with an amount of data practically identical.
In order to perform such a distributed application, a first peer generally needs to retrieve data stored by second peers addressed through DHTs, for “Distributed Hash Tables”, which references the peers wherefrom content can be downloaded.
The fair data distribution within a P2P network might lead to unsatisfactory delays for performing an application since the performing peer might not be directly linked—i.e. might not reference through its DHT—second peers wherefrom data has to be downloaded. Thus, intermediate peers must route the required data, from such second peers to the performing peer, so that a significant delay might be required to allow the performance of the application.